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“If disability is not on your board agenda, neither is diversity, nor is innovation, productivity, brand experience, talent, risk, reputation…” —Caroline Casey, founder, The Valuable 500
At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, I played a small role in launching a much-needed disability inclusion revolution to the global business community and now to Cannes’ award-winning acclaim.
Why? Largely because of this pressingly uncomfortable truth: While many companies are talking a good game when it comes to committing to diversity and inclusion, disappointingly few are genuinely walking the walk, opting to be “diversish.”
“Diversish” is to be selectively inclusive of some types of people within a company, group or business, depending on which type best suits the company. Recent research by EY found that despite 90% of companies claiming to prioritize diversity, only 4% consider disability, and yet 20% of the population, 1.3 billion people, live with some kind of disability—visible or invisible.
Bring in The Valuable 500.
Founded by Caroline Casey, this global movement aims to put disability on the leadership agenda by getting 500 of the most influential businesses to sign up and commit to action by the end of this year. So far around 320 signups are in process, with Unilever, Accenture, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Omnicom, Cinepolis, Barclays and Deloitte being some of the first companies to sign—not just because they think that morally it is the right thing to, but because it is the right thing to do to unlock business and economic value.
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